The Trinity Who Prays and Engages Others to do the Same
Keywords:
Action and contemplation, Trinity, One with God, Prayer, Self-RealizationAbstract
A Christian understanding of prayer, at the popular as well as the academic level, frequently holds up Jesus Christ as the model for interpreting what it means to pray. Think, for example, of the oft-cited text of Matthew 6:9-13: “This then, is how you should pray ….” But beyond reciting a prayer to the God of Jesus, as Jesus himself did, how is a prayer to be understood as an integral part of daily human life? What does it mean to “pray always,” as many mystics and faith-filled Christians have admonished over the ages? This article, rather than focusing on the life of Jesus as a singular reality to engage an understanding of prayer life, engages the communitarian life of the Triune God as the model for living and interpreting Christian prayer and how it is lived in everyday life of the Christian. As such, the article frames Christian prayer as essentially informed by and lived through the prayer of the community of the Trinity – a community of life that is present in moments of joy and celebration as well as moments of failure and disappointment. God, who is One, draws the Christian richly into Divine Life through the prayer of the Trinity to be the prayer, as Jesus was.
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